Politics

A Denver Omelette

By Matt Cooper

Matt Cooper reporting from Denver: Just wanted to add some more thoughts from the AFL-CIO panel. I suddenly got a vision this morning of what January 2009 might be like if Obama is president.

Most of the heat a President Obama could get may come from the left. As I noted earlier, the labor panel, which included the progressive freshman senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, as well as AFL-CIO secretary general Richard Trumka, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. They and others mostly focused on how to put the heat on Obama in 2009 should he win, and how to push a progressive agenda which, as Brown described it, "would be discussed by historians for the next 1500 years."

That's a tall order. Wasn't Charlemagne about that long ago? Robert Kuttner, the editor of the American Prospect, the liberal magazine, touted his plan to pay all health care workers a higher wage, something that would cost $150 billion a year, so that changing bed pans gets seen as more like a profession. Lots of applause for that one. There was also talk about aggressive spending on infrastructure and abandoning an obsession with the deficit, which Kuttner likened to Hoover.

I suspect the fight for Obama's soul on these questions is going to be deeper and more viciously fought that I had imagined. In a sense, while he's claimed control of the party, he hasn't really put his policy stamp on it yet. There's no Obamaism, beyond a belief in reforming politics itself to be more transparent and bipartisan. But that is in contrast to what many here—the bloggers, the unions, the pissed—want which is some hard-assed passage of progressive legislation.

Perhaps it's fitting that Ted Kennedy spoke last night. One of the less celebrated parts of his career is his 1980 bid for president against Jimmy Carter, when Kennedy challenged the Democratic incumbent from the left. Next winter could be all about that. On the other hand, Obama's shown remarkable political savvy and if he wins the White House, it's also a good bet that he could keep these factions under control.

The making of the Denver Omelette tells you a lot.

Matt Cooper

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Full post as published by Portfolio.com: Capital on August 26, 2008 (boomark / email).